My daughter the writer

OK, PalKid is only in first grade, but her new school insists that she write regularly, a practice I strongly endorse. For those of you who don’t have little kids, the current practice is to let kids spell however they wish when they are free-writing. Because I love my readers, I will share with you some of the earliest works of the soon-to-be famous PalKid.

Moday

My Weekend

I plad a socr gaem. it rand. it was fun. I went to pik up my cussin for a move. it was fun.

Tuesday

If i was a fair fitr for a day. I wud put out the fire. i wud be fun and i wud slid down the poll vere sopr dopr fast

Wednesday
If an alien landed in scool. I wuod giv it loss ov fod. and I giv it a bubule bath.

Friday
I went to the appal orchrd I had cidr and donas i pikd like 80 appals. i went an a hae rid. i went with my Daddy and Granp and my Grama. it as all fun.

If trick-or-treating was cancelled my Mommy and daddy would put candy in a estr eggs. it wuld be cool.

She also sent me her first text message today: “it is [PalKid’s full name] i love you very much daddy a lot”

Edsel

I found that period of time terrifying– sure she wouldn’t figure things out. I do have one note from my then 1st grader that I have framed in my office. “dere mama I lov you so mutch you don know.” She’s now 14 and an excellent writer and speller. Enjoy this brief period with her!

Isn’t it interesting that she spells some of the more complicated words just fine? Like alien and trick-or-treating? I wonder if it’s because she sees those words more? I don’t know. Learning to read and write is exciting. It is power. Just think of the places in this world where being restricted from learning this is a way to take away your power.

Jim

k8, I think it has something to do with the complexity of them. “That” is basically three simple sounds and if you mishear one, you’ll mispell it, and it’s very common so you can tend not to care about it. “Alien,” on the other hand, has some rather complicated sounds in an unusual order, so how you spell it has more to do with how you hear it. Or something like that.

I have a seven year old and he has a lot of words that he misspells that’re very simple, but can spell the names of pretty much every dinosaur he’s ever read about.